Impact Reports

BU AI Task Force Created In September 2023, Dr. Kenneth Lutchen, then University provost and chief academic officer ad interim, announced the formation of the New York Metropolitan Leadership Council, focused on developing best practices and shared approaches around the use of generative AI at BU, naming CDS faculty Wesley J. Wildman and Yannis Paschalidis co-chairs. Professor Mark Crovella also served as a task force member, along with representatives from 11 schools and colleges across the university.

The task force submitted its report in April 2024. Key policy recommendations included the “critical embrace” of the use of GenAI tools and resources, coupled with the support of AI literacy among faculty and students; clarity and consistency in University policies and individual course requirements regarding the use of GenAI tools; caution regarding the use of GenAI tools to identify academic misconduct; new policies to prevent sensitive or valuable information from being inadvertently shared through GenAI tools; and an emphasis on centralized decisions by the administration to guide tool acquisition and licensing, resourcing, and a plan for adapting to continuously changing GenAI technology and capabilities.

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The 2022–23 academic year was a year of firsts for the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. It will go down in history as a time in which computing became a landmark at the heart of campus, with data science emerging as the connective tissue of BU’s academic disciplines.

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Boston University, with the support of New America, released its report, “Public Interest Technology University Network: Understanding the State of the Field”, which sheds light on the priorities of PIT-UN members, and opportunities for future growth. The report draws on both an in-depth member survey and a broad scan of related activities, academic programs and research initiatives underway at 43 academic institutions that made up the membership of PIT-UN as of the summer of 2021. (The Network has since grown to 48 members.)

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In the span of just over a year, we launched two signature degree programs: our Bachelor of Science in Data Science undergraduate program and our PhD in Computing & Data Sciences. graduate program; we completed national searches for tenure-stream, clinical, and of-the practice professorships, bringing the size of our core faculty to five strong; we fused BU Spark! into CDS by seamlessly integrating its innovation and experiential learning programs into our curricular and co-curricular offerings, and more importantly by assimilating its culture of inclusion and empowerment of students; we grew our management, communications, and advising capacities by recruiting administrative team members who are passionate about our vision and culture; and we established partnerships with internal and external organizations that believe in the transformative power of computational and data-driven inquiry.

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This report published in August 2020 presents the recommendations of a working group of the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences (CDS) chaired by Professor Wesley Wildman and charged by the Associate Provost to develop a curricular framework for development of undergraduate and graduate education pathways in ethical & responsible computing (ERC). Based on an extensive literature review and a survey of faculty, this framework defines key terms, presents a roadmap for ERC educational initiatives in the form of six priorities, and identifies steps for implementation of its recommendations.

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Data science is widely seen as a promising field, one which is transforming business, government, and many areas of social life and is also having, and likely to continue to have, a substantial impact on the way in which scholars from fields as wide‐ranging as English and astronomy think about research problems and seek answers. Given the growing importance of data science, President Robert Brown assembled a taskforce of faculty to envision the future of data science at Boston University (BU). Imagining a set of proposals that would promote collaboration and innovation across departments, programs, schools, colleges and campuses, and invite engagement by faculty, students, and staff, the taskforce met over two semesters, sought input widely from across BU and did research on initiatives proposed or underway across US institutions of higher education. As a result of its work, the committee developed a set of recommendations that informed the launch of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences.

Read the taskforce recommendations